Lena Horne on “What’s My Line” (1958)

in Music, Television | May 10th, 2010

Anoth­er great way to remem­ber the great Lena Horne. This clip brings you back to 1958, when Horne appeared on What’s My Line, the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured hun­dreds of celebri­ties, includ­ing some of America’s lead­ing cul­tur­al fig­ures. You can rewind the video tape and also check out appear­ances made by Sal­vador Dali, Alfred Hitch­cock, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Grou­cho Marx, Carl Sand­burg, among oth­ers.

Lena Horne Sings Stormy Weather (1943)

in Film, Music | May 10th, 2010

Sad to note the pass­ing of Lena Horne, one of the first black tal­ents to break the col­or bar­ri­er in Hol­ly­wood. Here we have her singing her sig­na­ture song “Stormy Weath­er” in 1943. Thanks to @wesalwan, a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor, for flag­ging this vin­tage piece.

Conan O’Brien @ Google

in Comedy, Google, Media, Television | May 8th, 2010

Conan O’Brien’s Sil­i­con Val­ley tour winds up at Google as part of his “Legal­ly Pro­hib­it­ed From Being Fun­ny on Tele­vi­sion Tour.” In this set­ting, you can real­ly see his comic/improvisational tal­ents come alive (more so than on late night TV). Give it a watch and tell me if you don’t get a good laugh…

Woody Allen Talks Life with Priest

in Film, Life, Philosophy, Religion | May 6th, 2010

William Carlos Williams Reads His Poetry (1954)

in Audio Books, Literature, Poetry | May 6th, 2010

William Car­los Williams – doc­tor by day, poet by night, and cer­tain­ly one of Amer­i­ca’s finest. In this 1954 audio clip, we hear Williams read­ing his own poet­ry at the sto­ried 92nd Street Y in New York City. Poems include: “A Sort of a Song,” “The Maneu­ver,” “Sea­far­er,” “The Three Graces,” “Pater­son, Episode 17,” “The Descent” and “Fish.” The reads are now added to the Poet­ry sec­tion of our Free Audio Books Col­lec­tion.

Poet­ry lovers take note: Peo­ple Read­ing Poems is a very new web site where users can come to hear record­ings of peo­ple read­ing poems they love, and also to share their own favorite poems. It’s all com­plete­ly free and easy to use. If you have a free moment, pay it a vis­it and help the site grow.

Alice In Openland

in Audio Books, Books, Film, History, K-12 | May 3rd, 2010

This year, Tim Bur­ton’s pro­duc­tion of Alice In Won­der­land was wel­comed by a flur­ry of media buzz and a rather polar­ized pub­lic response debat­ing whether the icon­ic direc­tor had butchered or rein­vent­ed the even more icon­ic chil­dren’s clas­sic. But dis­cus­sion of the film’s cre­ative mer­its aside, one thing it did do bril­liant­ly was rekin­dle the pub­lic’s inter­est in what’s eas­i­ly the most beloved work of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture of the past two cen­turies.

So beloved, in fact, that Lewis Car­rol­l’s 1865 nov­el has gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of reprints, film adap­ta­tions and var­i­ous deriv­a­tive works over the years. Many of these works are now avail­able in the pub­lic domain — even a sim­ple search in the Inter­net Archive sends you down a rab­bit hole of adap­ta­tions and remakes, span­ning from land­mark ear­ly cin­e­ma trea­sures to off­beat prod­ucts of con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal cul­ture.

Today, we’ve curat­ed a selec­tion of the most inter­est­ing and cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant — the “curi­ouser and curi­ouser,” if you will — free ver­sions of, trib­utes to, and deriv­a­tives of Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land.

• The fun­da­men­tals: A Project Guten­berg free dig­i­tal copy of Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land text
• A 1916 abridged ver­sion intend­ed for younger chil­dren, dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress, is avail­able from the Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library and fea­tures some won­der­ful illus­tra­tion — though, regret­tably, it lacks the Cheshire Cat
• For a clas­sic with a spin, try this audio ver­sion read by blog­ger extra­or­di­naire, Boing­Bo­ing co-edi­tor, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence colum­nist and vocal free con­tent advo­cate Cory Doc­torow
• The ear­li­est cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of the book, direct­ed by Cecil Hep­worth in 1903, is a silent film gem, clock­ing in at just 8 min­utes and 19 sec­onds. Watch above.
• In 1915, W. W. Young direct­ed the sec­ond Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of Alice — a mas­sive six-reel pro­duc­tion that show­cased the rapid evo­lu­tion of film­mak­ing in just a decade since the first pro­duc­tion. Though much of the film is now lost, 42 min­utes of it can be seen at the Inter­net Archive for free
• A 1966 British adap­ta­tion by direc­tor Jonathan Miller for the BBC fea­tures an ambi­tious cast — includ­ing Peter Sell­ers as the King of Hearts, Sir John Giel­guld as Mock Tur­tle, Michael Red­grave as The Cater­pil­lar and Peter Cook as the Mad Hat­ter — and its sound­track, scored by the leg­endary Ravi Shankar, exudes the bor­der­line folk-psy­che­delia sound of the Wood­stock era. The film, divid­ed into sev­en parts, is avail­able for free on YouTube.
• This 2‑minute ver­sion of Alice In Won­der­land shot in the vir­tu­al world Sec­ond Life is an eerie tes­ta­ment to just how wide­ly Car­rol­l’s clas­sic res­onates.
• Per­haps the biggest trea­sure of all, Lewis Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal man­u­script, avail­able from the British Library — 91 pages of pre­cious lit­er­ary his­to­ry, with orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions from artist John Ten­niel. The online gallery also fea­tures a pref­ace telling the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of the Oxford math­e­mati­cian’s real-life inspi­ra­tion for the book and the fate of the real Alice

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

Vermeer with a BiC

in Art | April 29th, 2010

Take  Johannes Ver­meer’s, The Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, and then try to repro­duce it with a sim­ple BiC pen. That’s what artist James Mylne does here. In 90 sec­onds, we see what took him 90 hours to pull off. Here it goes.

Ernest Hemingway Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

in Literature | April 26th, 2010

Per­haps Ernest Hem­ing­way was­n’t the best at read­ing lit­er­a­ture aloud. And it’s why A.E. Hotch­n­er once said, “one of Ernest Hem­ing­way’s dead­liest ene­mies was The Micro­phone.”

But even so, it’s worth recap­tur­ing the voice of the Amer­i­can lit­er­ary giant – espe­cial­ly when we can hear him read from his  own work. The read­ing is called “In Har­ry’s Bar in Venice,” and it was record­ed with a pock­et recorder some­time in the late 1950s. You can access the record­ing (thanks to Harper­Au­dio) in mul­ti­ple for­mats here: .au for­mat, .gsm for­mat, .ra for­mat. Or you can buy it as part of a larg­er col­lec­tion called Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads Ernest Hem­ing­way.

Oscar Wilde in His Own Words

in Art | April 26th, 2010

It’s a cre­ative take on Oscar Wilde. And Eri­ka Iris Sim­mons does­n’t stop there. You can find more of her cre­ative “paper­work” cre­ations on her web site. Beethoven, Hitch­cock, Ein­stein – they’re all here… (For more of her work, also see Sim­mons’ Flickrstream.)

via Metafil­ter

James Dean and Ronald Reagan Clash in Newly Discovered Video

in Television | April 26th, 2010

Recent­ly a friend of John Meroney at The Atlantic dis­cov­ered this 1954 episode of Gen­er­al Elec­tric The­ater fea­tur­ing Ronald Rea­gan and James Dean.

Dean’s per­for­mance is superb, and the episode (edit­ed to 6 min­utes) is a para­ble of the cul­tur­al ten­sions of the time — with drugged up, beat­nik delin­quents invad­ing the home of a decent cou­ple to sub­ject them at gun­point to jazz and slang: “man,” “fake it, Dad,” “you dig me,” “that’s crazy,” “don’t goof on me now.” It’s a quite fit­ting scene, espe­cial­ly giv­en that Rea­gan went on to be the icon of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, while Dean became emblem­at­ic of the rebel­lious youth cul­ture to which Rea­gan’s move­ment was a reac­tion. But while the overt moral les­son of this episode is anti-rebel, there’s no doubt that pow­er­ful depic­tions like these–in which Dean’s expres­sive­ness is as charis­mat­ic as it is frightening–only con­tributed to mak­ing rebel­lion cool.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.